“Putin follows the cruel and criminal tradition,” say the initiative’s initiators
The Bundestag, Germany’s federal parliament, is set to pass a resolution describing the famine caused by Soviet leader Josef Stalin in the early 1930s as a genocide against the Ukrainian people. More than four million people then died of starvation as a result of the Holomodor, as the so-called Ukrainian Holocaust is also known.
German media revealed this Friday that the parliamentary resolution is based on a joint proposal drawn up by the ruling tripartite of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals, as well as the conservative opposition of Bavaria’s Christian Democrats and Social Christians.
The text, which is expected to be adopted next week, has been drafted to coincide with the day in memory of that catastrophe, which is always celebrated on the last Saturday in November in Ukraine.
The Holomodor is “on the list of crimes of contempt for human dignity committed by totalitarian systems, as a result of which millions of lives were wiped out in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century”, the draft resolution states.
This crime “is part of our history as Europeans and Europeans,” the document adds, which emphasizes that this “crime against humanity” is little known in Germany and the European Union. In the resolution, the deputies of the German lower house demand that the federal government make public knowledge about the Holomodor and contribute to the memory of the victims.
“Today more than ever, we are faced with Russia’s offensive war against Ukraine against international law, which is at the same time an attack on our order of peace and European values. The aspirations of great power and repression must have no place in Europe,” emphasizes the draft resolution, which also condemns the aggressive policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Putin follows Stalin’s cruel and criminal tradition,” said green Robin Wegener, promoter of the initiative and chairman of the German-Ukrainian parliamentary committee. “Ukraine is once again devastated by Russian terror. Once again they are trying to destroy Ukraine’s vital bases through violence and terror and subdue the whole country,” Wegener said.
The classification of the Holomodor as genocide is a “sign of warning”, the green deputy added, while his colleague from the Christian Democratic opposition, Knut Abraham, stressed that “this recognition is even more important given that Ukraine is once again the target of Russian aggression.
The famine of 1932 and 1933 that caused the so-called Ukrainian Holocaust resulted from the forced collectivization of agriculture and the mass confiscation of food by the Stalin regime, mainly in Ukraine.
In those regions where the farmers did not comply with the regulations for the supply of grain to the central government, all food in their homes was requisitioned and the affected areas were isolated militarily, causing millions of deaths.
Ukraine has for years demanded the recognition of the Holomodor as genocide in parliamentary resolutions of other countries. Moscow categorically rejects this initiative because the great famine in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s also affected Russians, Kazakhs, Volga Germans and members of other ethnic groups. It is estimated that more than seven million Soviet citizens died as a result of Stalin’s policies, more than half of them in Ukraine.
The resolution of the Bundestag goes further by stating that the Stalinism of those years used to persecute intellectuals in Ukraine “with the aim of exterminating the bearers of their cultural identity” and emphasizing that “the authoritarian government in Russia led by of Vladimir Putin pursues an ideological historical policy that prevents the tackling of Stalinist crimes, including the Holomodor.
Source: La Verdad
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